Paying regular price, buying everything new, and having exactly everything you need would be so boring, don’t you think? Frugality is definitely an adventure that keeps life interesting.
Okay, maybe a splurge would be fun every now and then too, but if you’re living the frugal life either by choice or by circumstance, you may as well enjoy it, right?!
I agree with Jeffrey R. Holland that “No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse.” So embrace your frugal adventure and don’t be afraid to smile about it.
If you aren’t seeing the “adventure” in your frugal life, try looking a little harder. Get creative and find the joy where you can. You’ll be so much happier if you do. And happiness goes a long way.
It’s Friday, so we’re celebrating our frugal feats, flops and funnies from the past week. Feel free to share yours in the comments so we can learn and laugh together!
Frugal Feats of the Week
In addition to our normal frugal ways, here are a couple of frugal wins that stand out this week:
New-to-us clothes
We don’t do a big, crazy, all-out school shopping event around here. I try to buy ahead when it comes to clothes for my kids. It’s kind of the same principle as living on last month’s income or stocking up on groceries. Throughout the year, I look for clothes in the size or two that each child will be growing into. That gives me more time to gather the clothes they will need using my ideas for getting kids clothes free or cheap.
I have storage bins for each of the kids where I keep the clothes for the next year or season. When it’s school time (or a season change), I pull out the bins and everyone gets to “shop” from their bin. It’s exciting for the kids because these are new (or new-to-them) clothes, most of which they haven’t seen before (I’m a sneaky shopper). They try on the clothes, see what fits, and have a little fashion show.
After seeing where my kids’ wardrobes were lacking, I used some free credit I had on Thredup and Schoola to order a few other basics. After choosing the item (shirt, shorts, jeans, etc) and size, then I sort by lowest price to get the best deal. If you haven’t tried either of these companies you can get a $10 ThredUp credit or a $10 Schoola credit through my referral links.
Old-to-us backpacks
Before my older two kids were even in school, I bought them backpacks and lunch bags. Lands End had a great after-season clearance on their super high quality bags, so I bought ahead, just like I do with clothes.
Just out of curiosity, I looked up the receipts in my email. The backpacks cost $10 each and the lunch bags were $5 each. I bought them in December 2011.
I’m super pleased that their backpacks and lunch bags are still in excellent condition (though I really need to run them through the washing machine)! I expect that they will at least last through elementary school.
Pro tip on buying ahead: Buy classic colors and styles. I do this anyway because I’m not a fan of characters and brands plastered all over clothes and merchandise. Because my kids’ backpacks are classic no one knows they are from 2011, whereas a character from a 2011 movie or trendy show would become dated and “uncool” relatively quickly.
My kids have told me that there are kids in their classes who go through two or three different backpacks in on school year! I can definitely see how investing in quality saves money (especially when you can get quality on a great sale)!
Frugal Flop of the Week
Seeing that we had library books due (thanks to the library’s friendly email reminder), we went to the library after school the other day. The shelf where we keep the library books looked pretty full, so I just assumed they were all there. That was sheer laziness on my part. I figured there would be some stragglers that would be left behind, but I thought the most efficient thing to do would be to just take all the library books on the shelf and then renew any books remaining on my account when we got home.
When I finally remembered (after two days of fine accrual), several of the books couldn’t be renewed because they reached their renewal limit. Ugh.
We are so far from the library, that it isn’t worth an extra trip into town to return them, so the fees will have to continue to mount until we’ll be in town again.
Yep, this is one of the ways I told you that clutter will cost you. Obviously I’m still a work in progress! Library fines are one of our weaknesses when it comes to clutter and disorganization.
Frugal Funny of the Week
One of my strategies for keeping our grocery budget low is to stock up on foods when they’re on sale so that, ideally, I never have to pay full price. Once you get the hang of the seasonal and sale cycles, it’s not too tough.
Every once in a while, I’ll find a great deal on something that I don’t normally stock.
At Grocery Outlet, our local discount grocery store (a close-to-the-expiration-date kind of place) I found cans of OceanSpray cranberry sauce 20 for $.97. You can’t even buy an empty can for that price!
I went ahead and bought a few cans, even though it’s something we never buy. You see, my sweet husband has always turned up his nose at canned cranberry sauce (and canned yams, as well). He likes to make it from scratch for thanksgiving, so of course I let him be in charge of that. I never buy canned cranberry sauce!
I didn’t want to stock up on something that we wouldn’t eat, even if it was ultra cheap (because I know the difference between a good price and a good deal). However, I figured I could look up some fun new recipes that used cranberry sauce (or invent my own)!
Usually my husband is more conservative than me when it comes to stocking up and scoring deals, so I was pretty surprised when he sounded disappointed that I only bought a few cans at this steal of a price. He ate is just fine. He couldn’t believe how cheap it was, so he let it slide that it wasn’t homemade. Of course, for Thanksgiving, we’ll be having the real thing, but he was ok with cans for non-holiday meals where we normally would have no cranberry at all. Some of the kids liked it too!
I don’t like to disappoint, so the next time I was in town I picked up another 48 cans of cranberry sauce. For the average person, that may very well be a lifetime supply! Yowzers!
It’s your turn!
That’s all I’ve got this week, friends. I would love to hear about your week!
- What were your frugal successes and failures?
- Any funny frugal moments?
- What would you do with a lifetime supply of canned cranberry sauce?
Call your library and see if they can manually renew the books for you. We misplaced a book once and spent the last two weeks of our renewal looking for it, to no avail. I mentioned it my librarian and she renewed it for me to give me two more weeks to hunt (we had already incurred a few days worth of fees, too). Luckily, we found it hiding in the car before it was due again.
I don’t beat myself up too much regarding the occasional library fees. We get so much use out of our library for so little in fees, that I’m happy to support them a bit.
Oh I probably could call to get them to waive the maximum of 3 renewals, but I hate making phone calls even more than paying library late fees. Now if it was a credit card late fee or something more expensive, I would call. Okay, full disclosure, I would have my husband call! 🙂
Like you, I look at the bright side and think of it as contributing to a good cause.
A few weeks after Christmas, CVS marks down all of their holiday stuff 90% off. I went in to look and they had the same cranberry sauce marked down to 15 cents a can. I grabbed a cart and grabbed 70. The women at the check out thought I was crazy. I gave 10 each to my mom and 3 sisters. They expire in 2017. We love cranberry sauce. I also got dog toys for 10 cents. They don’t care that they are Christmas. My mom always said to stock up when you see it because it might not be there when you go back.
That’s awesome Marybeth! Cashiers will never understand people like us! 😉
I bought LL Bean backpacks in plain solid colors two years ago by combining a sale/Ebates/coupon code. I went with LL Bean because they have a lifetime guarantee. They are still working great, and I tell my kids that those bags better last through college. I have a few friends who got a Jansport or LL Bean bag in grade school and still own them, and I am almost 40.
That’s awesome! Gotta love the lifetime guarantees!
Last week we went to Las Vegas (I had never been before). I was so excited to FINALLY take this trip since we had been saving since January for this trip. We had decided to get a 24 buffet pass and it was a great deal, as long as you visited more than one.
Well long story short after one buffet we were feeling pretty dang full. I felt like we were forcing food down our throats for lunch and dinner just to make sure we got our money’s worth. While the buffet pass seemed like a great purchase at the time, I think we’ll skip it next time 😉
That’s disappointing Lindsey! That’s good to know though. I would be tempted by something like that too, but feeling overstuffed (or that you have to eat more to get your money’s worth) is no fun!
It’s tradition at our house after Thanksgiving to use the leftover cranberry sauce to make muffins. My kids – college age – never liked to eat just cranberry sauce. But put it in a muffin and there you go! I just use a basic muffin recipe and added cranberry. Eyeballed it. Sometimes I would make a struesal topping.
Now I want cranberry muffins 🙂
Yes! I’m not a fan of the canned cranberry sauce either, but I love muffins!
My youngest son just started college, and we still have his Lands End backpack from kindergarten! It was a smaller one, so he had to have a new one when he started high school, but not because the old one wore out! It’s a “keepsake” that we would have passed on to another child, except that I had it personalized all those years ago. Zippers all still work just fine, too!
That’s awesome Kelli! 🙂
I don’t have a funny story this week but I have a question. Am I the only one who gets an over-the-top thrill when a money saving plan just happens? Tonight I was hungry for enchiladas. I had a bowl of chunked up chicken left from a big crock potful earlier this week. I found a small bowl of olives that had been in the fridge awhile. In the bottom of the cheese drawer there was a baggie of shredded cheese that was looking sad & I had exactly enough tortillas to fit all of the above. I made a big pan of enchiladas all from food that would have been thrown out or fed to the dogs in another day or so. I was so excited!! My son & grandkids sat around the table just shaking their heads. “Mom”, said my son, “you’ve GOT to get a boyfriend. Haha
You certainly aren’t alone! My family (parents and siblings) tease me too when i get too nerdy about frugality. I just embrace it! 🙂
A number of years ago I happened to come across a great deal on Jansport backpacks that were being clearanced out. I bought one for each of my four sons in classic colors (blue/gray/black), and they used them through high school. My youngest actually used his through his whole public school career, and just once there was an issue with some wear and tear. We sent it back to Jansport, which has a lifetime warranty, and they replaced it with a brand new backpack. Tomorrow we take him to college, and that backpack will be going with him as well. Not bad for a $10.00 each investment.
Jansport backpacks are great! I had one in high school and college. I love their guarantee. I remember sending mine in to have a zipper fixed one time! Great investment!
My recent feat/flop- canned yams (big cans) at Aldi for .25 each. They don’t expire for over a year! I bought 8 cans as I rarely use them. Naturally, I found a pancake recipe that uses them, and the whole family loved them! On my next trip I looked for them again but they only had the small cans for .25 and they expired in a few weeks. I wish I had bought another 8 or 10 of the big cans, but as Aldi is 45 minutes away, there was no sense in making a special trip outside of my usual once a month run. The next side I run into such a deal, I will err on the side of too much! Btw, canned cranberry sauce is called for in many sweet and sour type crockpot recipes.
You’re usually fine using cans that are quite past their best-before. As a kid in the 1970s my husband often camped out at some land his parents owned and ate ex-Army rations from WWII. He said they didn’t taste very good; but they were edible and nobody ever got sick off them.
I totally know what you mean Kara! There have been lots of times I have been disappointed because I didn’t stock up when I found a great deal!
Alright, here’s my story . . . It’s long, but stay with me.
Yesterday I opened up the credit card bill and was shocked to find it was about $100 more than I was expecting. I only use the credit card for on-line purchases and while my husband is a joint card-holder he never uses my card, he uses a couple of cards he got before we were married (and again, only for on-line purchases). This time there was a cash advance for $115. Because I didn’t want to go off all half-cocked I made a point of calling my husband first to make sure he hadn’t taken out a cash advance, although I knew he hadn’t, because his copy of my card always lives in a drawer in the kitchen. He confirmed he hadn’t, so I called the bank. They said that in order to dispute the charges I’d have to go into the bank, in person; and that I had 90 days to do it.
We live about half an hour from town; but I was a bit scared and nervous, not sure if this was an innocent mistake on the part of the bank or if someone had managed to access my card details, so – although I try to go only go into town once a week, and I’d just gone in the day before – I hopped in the car and headed into town. As I drove I resolved to be patient and kind and not get angry; just explain what had happened and get the bank to fix it up.
I got to the bank – explained the situation calmly – and a very kind woman filed a dispute for me. Then she pulled up a list of recent transactions. I was shocked to see another half-dozen charges for purchases I’d never made, all from very odd shops, with names like Gold and Pawn in the title. “Someone’s got my card,” I said. “None of those are mine.” They were all for very small amounts; but the woman at the bank said that was normal; they often test the waters first. They were all via PayPal, so it was obvious that someone had managed to get my PayPal account. I took a seat while she filed disputes for every charge.
Because I wasn’t planning to go into town that day, the battery on my phone was nearly flat. We have next to no reception at home so I just don’t use it at home. I’d turned it off before heading into town so that I could use it just for emergencies. Well, this was an emergency. I turned it on and sent a quick message to my husband to let him know what was going on, and then I turned it off again. I sat there, trying not to tremble, as the list of things to do next ran through my head – Change my PayPal password; let them know what had happened; how many more charges were there out there? How long would it take to get this all sorted out?
The woman at the bank informed me she’d cancelled the card, and disputed the charges. I watched as she cut the card up in front of me. I went back to the car, turned on the phone, and there was a message from my husband –
“Maybe those are charges from the coins we’ve been buying off eBay?”
About two weeks ago, my husband purchased some coin albums off eBay and we sat down to sort through a box of coins he’d been collecting for years. I had no idea, but we had about $150 in spare coins. (That’s groceries for a couple of weeks!) We decided to make up two albums, one for each kid, and each day, my husband had been bringing home $100 in coins for us to sort through for missing coins. We are painfully close to completing the albums. Since Australia used to have, but no longer has, 1 and 2 cent coins, he’d bought a set of each off eBay too. We’d also bought my son a $10 trillion bank note from Zimbabwe for his birthday, since he loves banknotes.
But it still didn’t make sense, because I never stay logged on to PayPal. I’m very careful about logging out each and every time because I don’t want the kids to accidentally (or on purpose!) make a payment. So I wrote back that it couldn’t be that, because when I’d hopped on on Saturday to buy a book off eBay, it definitely said it was his card that was saved to the account, and not mine. Then I thought – What if it is? I took a picture of the print-out of the charges I didn’t recognise and sent it through to him and asked him to check it against his eBay. Then I waited. Half an hour later the text came through: “Yep, those are ours.”
With my tail between my legs I went back to the bank to explain that I still wanted to dispute the $115 charge, but the other charges were ours; for the first time in about 14 years my husband actually used my card. While I was saying this another message came through the phone – which somehow still miraculously had battery – saying, “Oops. The $115 is mine too. I must’ve used your card when I took some coins out of the bank.”
Well by then I was well and truly embarrassed. I had her cancel that dispute too. Then I went off and bought her some chocolate as a way of apologising for all the hassle. (And I should add, in the interests of full honesty, that I was feeling like such an idiot over the whole thing, I bought myself some chocolate too.) Meanwhile the card has still been cancelled so I have to wait until the new card comes in the mail to pay off a bill that is fully and completely ours.
So, the good news is, we haven’t been victim of credit card fraud. And really if this is my biggest frugal flop of the week I’m still feeling pretty lucky. But, one unnecessary trip to town and some chocolate later, I’m feeling very, very foolish.
Oh Becca! That is a funny one!! I’m glad it didn’t end up being fraud, but I would have been embarrassed too!
Actually, you probably made the bank lady’s day– she got to deal with a nice, honest lady, she has a funny story to tell, AND she has chocolate! She probably had plenty of days where she deals with grumpy and/or dishonest people and doesn’t get any chocolate out of it! 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
There is a meatball recipe where you combine frozen meatballs cranberry sauce and cocktail sauce in the Crock-Pot. Yummy.
I love to make Southern Plate ‘s Cranberry Crunch with canned cranberry sauce! It is one of my family’s favorites! http://www.southernplate.com/2011/11/cranberry-crunch-and-ghosts-of-thanksgiving-past.html
Thanks Faith! We’ll have to try it!
Yeah, you really have to stay on top of the library thing or else you can get bit. Last time I went, I swore I had every single book only to check the next day and find that the kids each had one squirreled away. Luckily they were eligible for renewal, so no harm this time, but you really do need to double and triple check it seems!
I know! Maybe I need to start having the kids pay their own fines if their book isn’t on the shelf. That would definitely get them motivated to not keep library books in five different places around the house!
I got so frustrated with the library fines, that I request a print out when we check out and I tape it to the inside of one kitchen cabinet door. We often return different items at different times, so I cross them off the list.
….that and I started buying a canvas bag full of books at the last day of the annual library sale when books are 50% off. I read them, donate them back to the library and take the tax write off.
Ha ha! that’s a great idea Libby, both of them. My 8 year old is a voracious reader, though, and she would read through a bag of books in a couple of weeks! 😉 Telling her we weren’t going to check out books anymore would be the worst punishment for her (don’t ask me how I know).
There is a sausage ball recipe that uses canned cranberry sauce, stove top(or equivalent) stuffing, and ground sausage that is really good. My family eats cranberry sauce on top of a block of cream cheese as a dip for crackers at room temp. I also have a recipe for regular meatballs or turkey meatballs in the crock pot that uses canned cranberry sauce mixed with a bottle of chili sauce. A dessert recipe that might be good for your family is Cranberry Fluff. It’s got crushed pineapples, marshmallows, mandarin oranges, and cool whip in it.I made a cranberry cake last Christmas that was simply a regular cake mix that I put a swirl of melted cranberry sauce in then I melted more sauce to pour into the frosting.It made an almost Pinterest worthy beautiful swirl in the middle. The buttercream was a lovely pink color. I topped it with some chopped pecans and it was delicious. Like someone else said, it would be good in any kind of cake, bread or muffins. Oh and savory cranberry chicken in the crock pot then serve over rice..I could go on and on! I love cranberry sauce of all kinds and would have bought a whole bunch too! HTH, to give your a few more ideas!
Wow Jennifer! You are a wealth of cranberry ideas! Thanks for sharing! We’ll have to try some of these!
This makes me wish I’D found a steal on cranberry sauce! These ideas all sound absolutely delicious (yet I am a cranberry fan).
Oh my gosh that cranberry sauce! 😂😂😂 That is great! The only thing I could think of is cranberry chicken, but muffins, breads, pancakes, homemade bbq sauce would all probably be tasty with a kick of cranberries! Ooo, mixed with homemade yogurt! Now I’m wishing we had that store! Haha!
Ooo! We’ll definitely try it in homemade yogurt! I hadn’t thought of that one!
First post :). I am on day 9. I have a bunch of small goals that end up in $70,400 I need to repay to our savings account. Luckily it’s not debt but it’s money I should not have been spending. So my success this week was in mending some old clothes, “unknitting” some like new outgrown kids sweaters to get yarn for knitting later and mostly just not buying anything!, Failure was buying flavored water because there was a coupon (splurge) and then buying the wrong water! Maybe it’s a sign it’s to early to deserve a splurge. No funnies yet – or at least that I found about. Super excited to have found your blog. I read old entries instead of checking all my stores for sales like I usually do.
Unknitting a sweater and re-using the yarn– LOVE it! 🙂 And that’s awesome that you’re reading old posts instead of checking for store sales! When you’re trying to break any “bad” habit, it’s always important to replace it with a “good” one. 🙂
I have always been a frugal person, but I have to admit in the last couple years I have really let it slide, but in June we had to use all our savings to replace our furnace/air conditioning unit. So have been cutting back a little to build the savings back up. Well on Tuesday our truck started acting up and I lost the diamond out of my wedding ring, so now we really need to cut back! My frugal successes this week would be: Making hamburger buns from scratch and no one in my family complaining and one child even telling me they were the best he had ever tasted. I also found an outdoor adventure set my son has been asking for, for years on clearance for $4, so I was able to score that for his birthday in Dec! Funnies: Some of the hamburger buns I made are so small the hamburger patty is bigger than the bun. Lol! What would I do with a lifetime supply if cranberry sauce? Nothing. It would rot until someone took pity on it and threw it out! Lol, we are not cranberry sauce people. 😀 Thanks for writing this blog, it has really encouraged me to try harder to be frugal!
Oh man! So sorry to hear about the furnace, truck, and ring! 🙁 Great job on the hamburger buns! I can appreciate what a big win it is to have no complaints from the kids!